Grappling With Climate Change

The classic example of that is of the hurricane season. There was a study in 2004 that had projected out to 2080 and tracked trends in hurricane intensity and all the rest of it. What we see in the real world is these things are arriving a hell of a lot faster than we see predicted in the computer models.... I'm really worried that we're swiftly running out of time to deal with the problem. I do think that if we're going to survive this first threat to global civilization -- and it is the first big test of global civilization -- we will need to put ourselves on a war footing.

When a government goes on a war footing, they reorganize their enterprises around the imminent threat of invasion. So they can restructure the economy, the way the bureaucracy works, in order to combat the immediate threat. I do think the situation is worse than suggested in most computer models. We've got less time than we thought we did. We will need to give this issue primacy in our thinking as governments and as individuals over the next decade or so.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70405-0.html?tw=wn_politics_3